CHALLENGE
An American manufacturer of spacecraft, components and instruments wanted to improve visibility and efficiency across its engineering programs. Its product parts data was siloed across multiple systems. This reduced visibility into overall program execution and caused employees to waste more than 20% of their time searching for existing data.
SOLUTION
The company chose the Program Excellence industry solution on the Dassault Systèmes 3DEXPERIENCE platform to unify its data. It started by using NETVIBES Sourcing & Standardization Intelligence to identify standard parts and avoid migrating costly duplicates to the new system. The next steps would be to expand the content sources and provide advanced search capabilities for product lifecycle management (PLM) metadata and documentation, as well as feedback on how employees were using the solutions.
BENEFITS
NETVIBES enabled a data-centric approach to the company’s pre-migration process, accelerating implementation of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. OnePart Reduce and Reuse helped to define and standardize parts. This supported efficient migration planning and allowed the organization to reduce its parts catalog by 80%. Along with other NETVIBES solutions, OnePart has brought impressive improvements in data capture, parts reuse and visibility on project status.
Keeping Aerospace Projects in Flight
An American manufacturer of spacecraft, components and instruments for the national defense, civil and commercial space sectors, the company provides the industry with aerospace technologies and associated products including lubricants, optical systems, star trackers and antennas.
Streamlined operations are essential to deliver these complex products and services efficiently and on schedule. However, that becomes a challenge when data is scattered across siloed systems. The company’s three separate systems held parts content. As well as reducing visibility into overall program execution, these data silos caused employees to waste more than 20% of their time searching for existing data.
The company wanted to create a single user experience and promote digital continuity across its defense and space products and services. It chose the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to unify its data and move away from its siloed systems. Part of the artificial intelligence-driven Sourcing & Standardization Intelligence portfolio, NETVIBES OnePart was selected to streamline data migration and accelerate adoption of the new system. In addition, NETVIBES Data-Driven Business Performance would then be deployed as part of the Program Excellence industry solution. This would create the ideal environment for collaboration across design, engineering, manufacturing and maintenance disciplines.
Digital engineering is critical to supporting the evolution of the aerospace and defense industry – ultimately expediting the time from customer concept to program delivery. Incorporating a digital platform enforces our commitment to customers’ needs and aligns our capabilities for future missions.
– Vice President, Engineering
Clearing the Runway for Data Migration
To achieve its ambitions, the company needed to make sure the data it migrated to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform would be accurate, relevant and up-to-date. It started by verifying its parts content using spreadsheets of attributes, but the process took over an hour for each part. With hundreds of parts to review, the company needed to find a better way.
OnePart Reduce and Reuse provided the answer. By using OnePart to analyze records from multiple sources, classify parts by family type and select standard components, the firm was able to weed out costly duplicates. This helped it to plan its content migration, making sure that only preferred parts and alternatives would be migrated to the new platform.
The benefits were immediate. OnePart Reuse delivers a single source for users to search for OTS parts across the organization’s old and new platforms. In just one click, users can compare metadata from both systems side-by-side, with any differences highlighted. Verifying a part now takes one or two minutes instead of the hours previously spent using spreadsheets. It’s a huge time savings and has also reduced errors and ensured a strong business foundation to build on.
“Our customer leveraged NETVIBES early and took a targeted, data-centric approach to the pre-migration process,” said Morgan Zimmermann, CEO of Dassault Systèmes NETVIBES. “This made it possible to accelerate its data migration to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform as it embarked on its digital transformation journey.”
More Reuse, Fewer Parts
As well as saving time and effort in adopting the new system, the company’s ability to identify and migrate standard parts dramatically simplified its catalog. Instead of the 250,000 parts listed in the original siloed system, just 50,000 were migrated to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform – a reduction of some 80%.
It’s now faster and easier for engineers to search the system and find the parts they need, which is borne out in the number of people using the system. Since deploying OnePart Reuse, the company has seen a significant year-over-year increase in the number of engineers using the search capability to reuse existing parts – and in the number of searches that each user is performing.
Minimizing the proliferation of new parts is an ongoing quest for the company’s component engineers. They must direct users towards preferred parts, or users will simply request new ones and the components library will expand again. OnePart Reduce has saved the engineers huge amounts of time by allowing them to designate preferred parts and bulk-update their status across old and new systems.
Greater reuse of standard parts has already resulted in fewer new parts being introduced. In just one year, the number of master parts has dropped by 34%. Requests for designating master parts have fallen even lower, with a 43% decrease during the same period.
Better internal parts management will also help to optimize the supply chain. By using greater quantities of fewer unique parts, the company will be able to consolidate its purchasing and inventory management practices. This will create opportunities to expand to long-term agreements with preferred suppliers. The result: lower purchasing costs and improved part availability, which in turn means fewer schedule delays.
Data-Driven Insights
Alongside OnePart, the company is using NETVIBES Data-Driven Business Performance – part of the Program Excellence industry solution – to generate insights that will help it enhance the business and empower users. It provides various cockpits that are oriented towards key operational areas: project operations, issues mitigation and change management.
Each cockpit is home to a rich source of analytics that help users answer specific questions. A project manager might dashboard the evolution and live status of a project to optimize execution, resource allocation and delivery timelines, for instance. Engineers focusing on issues management can evaluate past and current problems to identify risks, support decision making and avoid future obstacles. And for those focused on change resolution, live 360-degree analysis of the process can reveal vital information about the trends at play, the modifications needed and the impact they will have.
Dassault Systèmes…allows us to capture knowledge and make it accessible to anyone who needs it while monitoring our development activity against key performance indicators. Through collaboration, standardization and maximized reuse of data and parts across our engineering operations, we can help our customers to take their businesses above and beyond.
Vice President, Engineering
Future Focused
Unifying its data has provided the company with a platform for continuous improvement in processes and efficiency. As the organization looks ahead, it is expanding the content sources analyzed by OnePart. It is also adding advanced search capabilities for its PLM metadata, and a usability monitor application to see how employees are using the solution and which additional sources should be included. As well as improving visibility into program execution status and allowing the company to capture more data for reuse, the solution will help to ensure that content security rights are accurately mapped between the original systems and the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.
With significantly improved visibility into program execution status and expanded data mining and analysis capabilities, the company continues to increase productivity and collaboration across the enterprise.
“Our organization is powered by endlessly curious people with an unwavering focus on pioneering discoveries that enable our customers to perform beyond expectations and protect what matters most,” said the vice president of engineering. “Dassault Systèmes is helping us to support that mission. It allows us to capture knowledge and make it accessible to anyone who needs it while monitoring our development activity against key performance indicators. Through collaboration, standardization and maximized reuse of data and parts across our engineering operations, we can help our customers to take their businesses above and beyond.”
Download the eBook to discover more NETVIBES data science solutions in action!
Brand content creator on the NETVIBES Marketing team